Pokemon Noir: No Stone Unturned
by The Actual Letter N
Summary: When a Gym Leader goes missing, private detective Lexia Green is hired to investigate his disappearance, but quickly finds herself searching for more answers than she thought she would need.
1. Chapter 1

Sun never seemed to have grown into the habit of entering the Green Detective Agency's office properly. It had all the opportunities to do so, with the velvet, dark red curtains invitingly open at most times; there were also many interesting things for it to play on once it did, with the cluttered desk placed directly below the window. Despite that, the large room, conveniently located on the second floor of a building in the very centre of the town, was always just a bit too dark and the tall, solitary lamp in the corner did little to avoid that. The dim lighting, however, did many favours to the office's atmosphere, as well as its owner herself.

Detective Lexia Green sat in her leather-bound office chair, with a cup in her hands and observed the lazy steam crawling up in the air from the dark liquid inside it. Her nails gleamed with a metallic shade of pink, matched perfectly with the stone in her pendant, visible from under her shirt only as a tinted reflection of the scarce rays of daylight. Her face was almost completely hidden in the shadow, her entire body silhouetted against the wall with only the curve of her legs, crossed and rested up against the windowsill marked off in the dark.

She lifted the cup to her lips, her absent gaze fixed at the cityscape behind the window. She had hand-picked this very apartment for her office partly because of its view - the city of Jornburg spread out before her like spilled wine, the flat, brick roofs of its stocky houses red against the sky. In the distance, the stone walls of the Pokemon Gym climbed proudly upwards, their intricate decorations now invisible through the fine morning fog.

The stillness of the room was broken, when a dark, slender shape separated itself from the curve of an old couch and meowed loudly. The Persian walked into the circle of light by the heavy, wooden door and sat down, staring at its trainer with its head cocked sideways. It meowed again.

A few seconds later, a soft knock sounded in the room, promptly followed by another, louder one. Lexia lowered her legs down to the floor and placed the cup on the desk. She leaned back to keep her face in the shadows and said:

'Come in.'

The door opened with a creak and a streak of harsh, artificial light came in from the corridor. A short, young woman walked into the room, petite and blonde-haired, clutching a phone in her hand. She stopped, as if hesitant, on the doorstep, and squinted, trying to see through the darkness. The Persian let out a low purr and wrapped itself around her bare legs; she started and quickly took a step forward, closing the door behind her with a dull thud.

'Um...' she spoke. 'I came to see miss Lexia Green?'

'You found her,' Lexia said, still leaned back into the shadow. Her voice was deep, with a harsh ring to the consonants.

'Oh, um, good,' The girl by the door pulled at her orange shirt and then at the belt of her shorts. 'I wanted to ask a favour of you, see, it's a bit... Um...' She finally shoved her hands into her pockets, calming them down. 'Delicate.'

The Persian fell still and then, slowly, sat down. Lexia straightened her back and light finally fell on her face, showing her sharp, triangular chin, dark skin and amber eyes, framed by long, black wings of eyeliner.

'Please,' She gestured towards the chair opposite her.

The client nodded quickly and, carefully stepping over the Persian, sat down, still staring at her hands, now crossed in her lap.

'First thing's first, what's your name?' Lexia asked, moving over some papers scattered across her desk to make space for a tablet she had produced from a side drawer. 'I don't need a real one, just something to call you.'

'Oh, it's Catherine,' The girl brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. 'It's real, I'm not... I'm not the delicate part. I'm not hiding from anyone.'

'Alright, that's good then,' the detective nodded, touching the tablet's screen and waking it from standby mode. She brought up a keyboard and typed down a few words. 'What is the delicate matter, then, Catherine?'

Catherine looked down again, at her hands crumbling the hem of her shirt.

'It's... A secret. Not to you, I mean,' she corrected herself quickly. 'Just, we've kept it a secret and we need it to stay that way because people might talk, they might get worried... And we need to keep it really quiet as long as we can, so we didn't go to the police, nobody said anything, I was only allowed to come here now, they didn't want me seeking help, they said...'

'Alright, alright, slow down,' Lexia raised her hands. She glanced at the girls flustered face and smiled reassuringly. 'Slow down,' she repeated. 'Tell me what happened. Who are "they"? Who might get worried?'

Catherine took a deep breath and straightened her shirt. She nodded to herself, as if she had just made a very serious decision.

'"They" are other trainers working at the Gym,' she recited. 'Trainers coming to challenge it might get worried, because we haven't been accepting anyone for three days now. Because our Leader is missing.'

Lexia's eyebrows crawled upwards. She was silent for a while, taking in the client's chaotic body language and her stubbornly lowered gaze, until she eventually tapped at her tablet again.

'Felix Lacen is missing?' she repeated.

'Yes,' Catherine said quietly. 'He has been for three days. He went to the market and never came back. We've been lying to people ever since, not letting anyone in...'

'You did right,' Lexia assured her. 'A Gym Leader's absence isn't something you should announce to the world.'

'The other trainers didn't want to tell anyone,' the girl confessed, finally looking up. Her eyes were dark with determination. 'They said it's an inside matter, that we should deal with it ourselves. We went looking and found nothing, and they wouldn't listen to me, they said I don't know how Gyms work, because I'm new, but...' Her voice trailed off. 'But I'm getting... worried. That's the word. So I came to you.'

The detective typed down a few more words and then moved the tablet aside and looked straight into Catherine's eyes. To her surprise, the girl met her gaze.

'Again, you did right,' Lexia said. 'You, personally. You did right to seek help and to seek it with me, instead of the police. It is, indeed, a... delicate matter.' She cracked her fingers. 'I will get right to it.'

'What?' Catherine blinked. 'As in...'

Lexia stood up and walked around the desk to a large, wooden wardrobe by the door. She retrieved a black, leather jacket and a belt with six Pokeballs evenly attached to its surface.

'As in "right now",' she confirmed, producing a tube of lipstick from a drawer nearby. 'Thank you for telling me.'

'You're welcome,' the girl answered mechanically. 'But... Do you think this is... Serious?'

The detective was silent for a minute, as she painted her lips a deep, matte raspberry colour. She carefully slid the long wand back into the tube and put it back in the drawer; then she turned around and reached to the top of the wardrobe. She placed an elegant, black hat on the dark waves of her hair.

'It's definitely delicate.'


	2. Chapter 2

The Jornburg City Gym, as expected of a facility of its reputation, was decorated in the spirit of overwhelming excessiveness. Its outer walls were made of coarse, light stone and adorned with ornate carvings, depicting scenes from the Sawra region's legends. Two massive figures kept watch on both sides of the entrance, an Aggron and a Golurk, both holding ends of a chain that met just below the very roof, under a large, faceted jewel that turned the morning sunrays into blue reflections on the sand.

Inside, the entrance hall was just as grand. The glass door opened to a wide corridor lined with slender, stone columns and a floor covered with smooth, white stone. Protruding from the walls, there were long, narrow benches, occasionally divided with rectangular tables, each one housing a metal rack of flyers and a hidden registration screen. Further into the room, there was a tall, heavy desk made of polished sandstone and behind it, an orange-haired woman sat in an office chair, her chin rested on a fist and her blurry eyes fixed on the distant entrance. She was waiting.

She had taken her place behind the information desk an hour ago, after a furious argument in the social room had forced her to flee to the quiet entrance hall. Then she had listened to the shouting voices, carried on an echo between the stone walls until that too had become too much for her and she had resorted to cutting herself off from the world with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. After a few minutes, one of the doors had slammed and Catherine Skola had stormed out of the corridor, red-faced, distraught, and obviously in no state to hold a rational conversation. 'Piss off, Lydia' were the exact words she had used before grabbing her bag from the cloakroom, slamming the door and dashing out onto the street. Shortly after that, there had been a muffled thud of another door slamming somewhere in the building and the argument had been over.

Now, Lydia was staring blindly at the glass door, so deep in thought that she didn't even start when it slid open and Catherine walked back in, less flustered, but not really much calmer, gripping the strap of her bag tight in her hand.

'Lydia,' she said, quickly shooting a glance at the door leading to the social rooms. 'I'm sorry I yelled at you. I was angry and it wasn't your fault, please don't be mad at me.'

'I'm not.'

'If you meet Harry tomorrow, please tell him I didn't want to upset him either, I was just so done with all of this.'

'I will.'

'And um, we have a visitor. I, uh, told everyone I was gonna get her, but maybe you didn't catch it,' Catherine tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 'I'm sorry to spring it on you so suddenly, but, you know, something had to be done, it's getting really strange and, you know.'

'No problem. I figured you'd bring somebody with you.' Lydia brought up a menu on the screen in her desk. 'I'll get them a pass.'

'Thank you so much,' the girl exhaled in relief. 'She said she's gonna be right behind me, she had to drop something off at a letterbox somewhere along the way.'

'She?' Lydia looked up.

The door opened again and an extraordinarily tall, slender woman walked in, dressed in solid black. Only a pink pendant on her neck stood out against her skin beneath the unbuttoned dress shirt. She lifted her head and the shadow cast by her hat lifted as well, revealing the dark colour on her lips.

'Holy shit' Lydia said.

Lexia Green crossed the hall, hands hidden in the pockets of her leather jacket and stopped in front of the desk, towering above the petite Catherine. She tipped up her hat and looked down at Lydia with a small smile.

'Could I bother you for a visitor pass?'

Lydia blinked rapidly and nodded, tapping one last button on her screen, which resulted in a printer under the desk starting up with a whir. She slowly turned her eyes to Catherine.

'I underestimated you,' she said, with some difficulty.

The girl answered with a nervous smile and reached over the desk for the pass, which the printer had just spat out of an opening next to the screen.

'Thanks. I'll sign this.'

Lydia handed her the laminated piece of paper and a marker pen. She glanced at Lexia, who was patiently observing Catherine's fumbling with the clip on the back of the pass. If she had known just how angry the 'little new girl' had been just an hour ago, she wouldn't had even attempted to talk to her. She made a mental note of never again calling her any of the stingy pet names the others had come up with.

Little Catherine Skola was very serious about who she was.


End file.
